Spooky Halloween Night Hike

Boo.

There are lots of great ways to celebrate Halloween, which according to Wikipedia originated as a Gaelic harvest festival called Samhain, marking the end of the "lighter half" of the year, and the beginning of the "darker half." Fitting, though it should be pointed out that (in the northern hemisphere) the actual halfway point between the summer solstice (presumably the lightest day), and the winter solstice (presumably the darkest) is a full month earlier, on September 20-21. But who's counting? OK, I am.

Anyhow, some people (like my advisor) go all out with the costume thing, dressing up like ghouls and goblins and gremlins, turning their houses into haunted castles, and scaring unsuspecting PT students. I may have been part of that in the past.

Halloween 2008

Dr. Schroeder (R) really likes Halloween

Others celebrate by eating copious amounts of candy, and displaying copiously oversized gords. Last year I cooked such a gord:

Halloween 2009

I still have leftovers in my freezer.

This year, fitting with the outdoor exploration theme, I decided to go for a spooky Halloween night hike. I was super stoked that my friend Anil was up to join in the adventure.

The destination was Paseo Miramar, an easily accessible and popular West LA trail widely rumored to feature spectacular views, but which according to recent intelligence (Exhibits A and B are hereby entered as evidence) may also just be a giant, gray cloud - not that there's anything wrong with giant, gray clouds. The plan was to hike up in the daylight, check out the sunset, wait for darkness to settle, then work our way down.

As it turned out, when the weather's good, this place really is spectacular. Here's a view looking east toward downtown, enroute uphill:

Smog and sprawl are indeed spooky

...and here's the view from the top at Parker Overlook:

Whaddya know...a mira...of the...mar

Apparently everybody else in town was busy tricking, treating, or refilling their insulin pumps, because we had the place to ourselves. The sunset was rad:

Paseo Miramar sunset

As darkness fell we swapped a few scary stories, and took a few pictures. I like this one, looking down on the Santa Monica Bay:


Walking back down in the dark under a moonless sky was really cool - checking out a few stars overhead, a curious spotlight in the distance, and of course fending off all the vampires, zombies, and werewolves. OK the last part didn't really happen, but we were walking right through the middle of some dense foliage when Anil brought up the possibility that intelligent plant life is actually surreptitiously controlling the world. That was creepy.

For more nice sunset photo's, check out Anil's gallery. I particularly like this one, of a silhouetted (and secretly all-powerful) plant:

Photo credit: Anil S.

Here's hoping you had a happy - and spooky - one too!